


your heart's a mess

by notbang



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Feelings, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room, the whole shebang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 03:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15427677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notbang/pseuds/notbang
Summary: It takes her a moment to notice him, preoccupied as she is with peering around the corner to where the masses of confused guests are milling about, restless, with her half of the bridal party congregating off to the side and exchanging hushed and hurried whispers. She looks nauseous and unsteady on her feet but when her gaze meets his her lips part in surprise before she straightens and squares up her shoulders.“You,” she says with a determined sniff. “You’re driving.”Post 2.13, Rebecca finds Nathaniel.





	your heart's a mess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cori_the_bloody](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/gifts).



> So this is loosely based on Rachel talking about how the initial plan was for Rebecca to go straight to Nathaniel's apartment in 3.01, rather than the whole plot of 3.02. Only it kind of went in its own direction from there.
> 
> Also loosely, belatedly filling the tumblr prompt 'things you said when I was crying'.

He’s coming back from the bathroom when he spots her, hovering in the doorway to the ladies’ room with her arms flung out and hands gripping the wooden framework with all the determination of a reluctant sky diver clinging to the edge of a light plane hatch, horrified at the prospect of being tossed loose. Her knuckles are taut and white against the timber, her face a similar shade of pale.

It takes her a moment to notice him, preoccupied as she is with peering around the corner to where the masses of confused guests are milling about, restless, with her half of the bridal party congregating off to the side and exchanging hushed and hurried whispers. She looks nauseous and unsteady on her feet but when her gaze meets his her lips part in surprise before she straightens and squares up her shoulders.

“You,” she says with a determined sniff. “You’re driving.”

“Huh?”

She yanks up handfuls of her dress and gathers them into her arms so as to better stomp ungracefully towards him. “You want elevator sex? I’ve got elevator sex. I’ve got a bridal suite on the twenty second floor that says three solid minutes of hot, sweaty elevator sex if we push all the buttons at once and confuse it just right.”

An indecipherable noise fights its way out of the back of his throat as he stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Are you, uh… okay?”

Rebecca’s eyes widen in disbelief. “Are you seriously turning down no-strings, no-holds-barred, unbridled sexual intercourse right now?”

He stares dumbly at her for a few seconds, fingers fisting and unfurling in his pockets before he slowly withdraws his right hand, wrapped around his keys.

“When do we start?”

 

* * *

 

The receptionist greets them as Mr and Mrs Chan—Nathaniel winces and opens his mouth to say something to the contrary, though what exactly, he isn’t entirely sure. Rebecca beats him to the punch, though—she tilts her head and forces a sardonic saccharine smile before sweetly requesting the keys. 

“We weren’t expecting you two until later this evening, but…” The receptionist trails off as she types something into her computer. “It looks like your suite is all ready to go, so you can head on up.” She eyes their sole piece of luggage—Nathaniel’s pale grey gym bag—with bemusement. “Somebody can bring your bag up for you, if you’d like, or—”

“I think we’ll manage,” Nathaniel interrupts.

Despite her earlier insistence Rebecca barely glances at him in the elevator, her fingers strumming against the brass handrail with a nervous, restless energy that’s frustratingly contagious—Nathaniel’s not well accustomed to exuding uncertainty. When the doors part with a cheerful ding she practically bolts out of them, the skirt of her gown rustling loudly in the stillness of the corridor as she makes a beeline for the room.

Once she fumbles through the unlocking mechanism they both freeze in the doorway to stare at the heart-shaped arrangement of rose petals on the bedspread and the ornate gold ice bucket, resplendent with two expensive bottles of champagne, waiting by the breakfast bar. The certainty that coming here of all places was very much _not a good idea_ for a multitude of reasons becomes increasingly apparent to him.  


Rebecca’s mouth opens and closes wordlessly a few times as she scratches absently at her forearm.

“I’ll, uh… I just need to freshen up,” she says in a rush that betrays the shortness of her breath, and shuts the bathroom door behind her with a thud before he can get a word in.

There’s a long stretch of silence followed by the sound of running water.

Nathaniel drops down on the end of the bed with a sigh.

 

* * *

 

He’s not an idiot. 

He knows this entire implausible situation is a disaster waiting to happen. A disaster already very firmly in the midst of unfolding, if he’s perfectly honest with himself, and if he had any sense left he’d hightail it out of there in an instant. It’s just—there’s a part of his brain that doesn’t work quite right when Rebecca’s involved. Not since she kissed him with such dizzying, unchecked enthusiasm in the low light of an elevator. Not since she hugged him with such unexpected tenderness, flinging her entire body into it and up against his with gratitude. Not since she collided with him once then never stopped, and he’s barely been able to think of anything else since.

The bathroom fell silent once the water shut off. He considers checking on her but isn’t sure what to say so he tells himself she obviously needs the space and lets her be. Instead he flops backwards onto Rebecca and Josh’s plush white, king-sized wedding bed and groans, sending the tacky arrangement of rose petals scattering; he checks his emails then finds himself thumbing through the Instagram feed for #bunchofchans with a morbid sense of schadenfreude, hoping to pinpoint the exact moment everything fell apart and people stopped knowing precisely what to post about it. Nathaniel knows a little something about plans—his entire life scheduled out around him since birth, the expected (demanded) end quotient never anything shy of perfection—and he can’t help but see the untamed beauty in their breakdown, just so long as it’s happening to somebody else.

He pauses when he hits one of the early posts in the tag—Rebecca pulling a face at her own reflection while Paula fiddles over her shoulder with her hair. She looks silly (not unusual) and the caption and her hashtags are about as eyeroll-inducing as he’d expect, but something about the looseness of it, the giddy (naive) anticipation written all over her face makes him sick with pity. He resents the sensation, and exits the page and drops his phone down onto the covers next to him in the hopes that it will stop. There’s nothing sexy about _pity._

When the woman in question lets out a hopeless moan that’s garbled in its pass through the door he checks his watch and realises she’s been in there for nearly forty minutes. The excuses he’s been inventing not to make sure she’s still alive start ceasing to seriously stick.

He raps hesitantly on the white enamel.

“Rebecca?”

When she doesn’t answer he pushes it open slowly, enough to give her time to object if necessary. She doesn’t bother, though, and he finds himself staring at her sunk low into the clawfoot bathtub, idly twisting at the brassy antique faucet with her pink-painted toes. She’s still sporting her veil, the netting looking about as crushed and dejected as the woman wearing it, and the voluminous fabric of her dress puffs up and out over the edge of the tub, water soaking through it and sending it hanging limply, dripping, down the sides. 

Her eyes are red. It’s obvious she’s been crying.

“We’ll get to all the banging real soon, I promise,” she says, swallowing. “I just need a minute.”

“Uh-huh.” 

_Run_ , the sole remaining reasonable neuron still firing in his Rebecca Bunch-addled brain screams at him. But the part responsible for controlling his limbs only sleepwalks him a half-step closer.

“Rebecca,” he says again, appalled by how strangled it comes out around the way his tongue feels suddenly too thick for his mouth.

“I’m fine,” she sniffs.

“Okay, but you’ve been in there for awhile now, and the water’s cold and you’re shaking, so I really think you should get out.”

“I’m not shaking,” she counters automatically. “I’m not shaking. I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine.”

Her skin is pale and peppered with goosebumps, almost translucent in that way people only seem to turn after being cold and wet for too long, and when she clenches her jaw to fight the impulse for her teeth to chatter he rolls his eyes, shoving up his shirtsleeves before bending down to work his arms beneath her so he can haul her out. It sends a waterfall of tub water cascading down onto the tiles around them and he can feel where it soaks through his clothes that it’s not even tepid. He doesn’t think she used the hot tap at all.

“Hey! Put me—stop it, Nathaniel, put me down!”

She’s heavy, what with all the layers and the extra water weight, and he grunts with the combined effort of warding off her ineffectual indignant batting against his chest. The veil gets lost in the struggle as he deposits her unceremoniously in the shower, ignoring her protesting yelp and reaching past her to turn on the water, letting it run warm as the spray beats down over the both of them, eliciting a synchronised jerk as the stream makes contact and quickly eliminates any remaining dry patches either of them had managed to still be nursing.

She draws in a sharp breath and holds it deep inside her lungs, squinting into the spray, her now-saturated hair darkening and stretching out from its careful coiffure to sluice down over her shoulders. She looks startled, and Nathaniel’s not convinced he doesn’t look the same, equally surprised by his own actions now he’s stopped for a second to think about them.

He’s not entirely sure what to do next.

“Off,” Rebecca chokes out suddenly, clawing at the wet lace on her shoulders before sliding her hand up to dig beneath the necklace that’s suddenly sitting too high and tight around her throat and yanking, _hard,_ until the string breaks and the tiny pearls bounce off the tiles and scatter down the drain. “I need… I need this off. I can’t… I can’t…”

Something about the crack in her voice has him obeying without question, knocking her hands aside to help her with the zipper, fingertips slipping on the fastening as she contorts herself, heaving and desperate, to peel off the gown that has soaked through and sealed to her like a second skin. She’s not shivering anymore but she’s breathing hard and he can’t help it, can’t stop his eyes from sliding down over where her body is mostly bare save for the barely-there cover afforded by her bridal lingerie, already sheer and made just about fully see-through in the downpour. He swallows and averts his eyes, forcing himself to focus instead on where her hands grip bruisingly at his forearms, holding herself rigid and steady against her swaying. 

They stand there for a moment, his world dizzyingly reduced down to the enclosed space of a shower stall rapidly filling with steam, her chest rising and falling erratically and her ruined dress spread out like a heavily beaded halo around them, scrunched up at their feet, clogging the drain.

She looks up at him finally, as if noticing his presence in front of her properly for the first time, and lets out a long breath, releasing some of the tension from her shoulders with it.

It takes him a few seconds too long to process the implications of her eyes dropping to his mouth, calculating her intention a fraction too late as she launches herself at him, bare feet losing traction on the tile from the force of it. 

He’s kissing her back before his brain can suggest any action to the contrary, powerless to resist the way her hands are everywhere all at once. She sighs into him and her arms lock around his neck to tug him down and against her as she dips back, dragging them directly into the spray and _Christ_ , it’s like something out of one of the insipid romcoms she likes to fashion her life after, all angst and overwhelming passion framed dramatically by the pouring rain. The only upside here is the water’s as warm as the rest of him, her mouth sweet and wet as it moves mercilessly against his. 

Not for the first time he notices that she kisses like she’s catching fire, hot and hungry and all-consuming, pouring every ounce of herself into it. He hasn’t known her long but it’s been long enough to realise that when Rebecca feels something she tends to feel it with all of her; a flurry of overloaded sensory networks wired to explode with each and every emotion, crashing over her and swallowing her whole. Today has been no exception, and the sudden realisation that she’s mere hours out from being left at the altar (comical, given the physical reminder literally laying at their feet) washes (again, the irony) heavily over him. When her trembling hands start fumbling for his belt between them he forces himself to focus and pulls away.

Nathaniel’s never been one for crises of morality, but even he can see the questionable ethics at play in taking his highly-strung, recently-jilted, headstrong employee up against the slippery tile of her honeymoon suite shower stall.

“Okay,” he says, extricating himself from her (warm, wet, desperate) mouth and clearing his throat. His hands settle over her hips, purely to hold her at bay and not at all to fulfil his agonising curiosity at what that soft swell of skin above her underwear might feel like. “Listen, Rebecca. You’ve been through a lot today, and I’m not sure I should get in the middle of—”

“Shut up,” she commands, and tries to kiss him again, growling in frustration when he takes a step back. “What, what’s the matter? You don’t want me anymore because I’m not taken? This isn’t so appealing to you now that I’m not getting married? Suddenly your little game of pursuit’s not so fun anymore, huh? Is that what it is?”

He raises his hands placatingly. “Rebecca, I—”

“You know what, never mind. It’s fine. I get it. Nobody wants me. My fiancé didn’t want me. My own _father_ didn’t want me, so why should anybody else, right?”

She pushes past him out of the cubicle, grabbing blindly for a towel. It takes him a moment to catch up and do the same, fingers struggling with his buttons to discard his sopping wet dress shirt. She’s almost at the door when he makes it out of the bathroom, slacks clinging uncomfortably to his calves, and he watches her reach for the door handle with alarm.

“What are you doing?” he asks, exasperated. “Rebecca, you’re in a towel—where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“Anywhere but here.”

“You can’t just go out like—”

“I don’t care,” she snaps. She turns back to face him, his stomach lurching at the way her shoulders drop and her face crumples as she does so. She shrugs hopelessly, her ire extinguished as quickly as it flared. “I don’t care. Nothing matters anymore.”

Nathaniel shifts uncomfortably on his feet, definitely perturbed by the wobbling of her bottom lip and the unchecked welling of tears in her eyes and the unwelcome tightness growing in his own chest at the sight of it. He thinks maybe he’s supposed to go to her—hug her, maybe; rub soothing circles on her back, pat her arm in the very least—but his feet remain firmly rooted to the carpet. Besides, after what recently, ill-advisedly, very nearly transpired between them in the bathroom, he’s not so sure physical contact is the best idea.

He works his jaw and gestures to his duffel bag where it lies at the foot of the bed, resigned. “At least put some clothes on.”

When she doesn’t respond but lets her hand drop from the doorknob he takes it as a small encouragement, moving in slow, unhurried movements and feeling for all intents and purposes as if he’s some kind of hostage negotiator or keeper, dancing around a wild and cornered animal and doing his best not to frighten her. His careful retrieval of his workout clothes is almost comically _hands where I can see them._

“How about you dry off and put on a shirt, hmm?”

 

* * *

 

She hovers awkwardly in front of him in his baggy grey t-shirt, loose and long enough on her that it skims the tops of her thighs but pulls a little across the chest (not that he’s staring—just objectively noticed). Her hair is starting to frizz out as it dries and now that she’s washed the last traces of smudged makeup off her face she looks younger without it. Less fierce.

He’s pulled on his spare running shorts and for a moment they just stand in front of each other in the middle of the room, two halves of the sole dry outfit they have between them.

“I should go.”

“Don’t,” she says immediately.

He waits for some sort of follow up, some kind of reasoning; she bites her lip and stays silent, her eyes stubbornly fixed to the floor.

He cranked up the thermostat when she disappeared to change and while the warm, dry air was welcome given their respective states of undress it starts to feel stifling.

“Do you want me to take you home?”

Her eyes fly to his at that, impossibly wide and panicked. “No. I can’t go back yet. I can’t—”

“Okay, okay,” he says quickly. “We can stay. Whatever you want. You hungry? You want to order in?”

When he follows her gaze to the ice bucket by the bar he raises his eyebrows and huffs out a laugh. 

“Yeah, alright. Now we’re talking.”

 

* * *

 

“You’ve only been dating the flipflop a few _months_? What is wrong with you?”

“Like, alphabetically? Or in order of impact on my day to day functioning?”

He tilts his head at her for being facetious and her mouth blossoms into a brief, unexpected grin.

They’re lying on their backs on the bed, top and tail, Rebecca’s hair fanned out around her and her bare feet resting on the wall above the headboard as she toys with a stray rose petal, ripping it to shreds. He’s pleasantly buzzed, brain a little hazy but for the most part in control of his faculties. As much as he ever is lately when the woman beside him is concerned.

“I know. I know you think it’s stupid, and rash, and that I deserve everything I got. But I knew. I _knew_ , okay—that Josh and I were meant to be together. And he let me believe he knew that too.”

She walks her feet back down the wall and pushes up onto her knees, wobbling and wriggling with wine bottle in hand to join him in the right orientation for the bed. She flops back onto the second pillow and tugs the comforter up over them before she twists her neck to look at him like she’s ready and waiting for his judgement.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” he says instead.

Rebecca raises her eyebrows. “The love of my life just ditched me at the altar and you’re sorry about my dad?” 

He’s relieved by the wryness in her tone.

“I mean, Josh is an idiot. I’ve always thought so, and mentioned as much to you more than once.” He glances over at her as she shrugs in acknowledgement. “But what I’m saying is, I’m sorry if me bringing your father here… made things worse. That wasn’t my intention.”

“What? No. You bringing him here was… a dream come true, honestly. My father made things worse all on his own.” She looks down at her hands, then scrunches up her face, glancing at him sidewise. “He, uh… he asked me for money. Yeah. His other kid—the one he actually kinda cares about—needed braces, or something, and I did it. I gave him the money, because I was so worried about him leaving if I didn’t. Turns out I was worried about the wrong person leaving, though.” She barks out a bitter laugh. “Maybe I should have written Josh a cheque.”

He knows he should find her display of self-deprecating self-pity pathetic. Knows it’s some kind of insidious weakness, the way each shaky inhalation that rattles through her insignificant frame makes him feel like he can’t breathe properly. Like he’s saving all the air for her if she needs it.

“Did he…” He trails off, looking for the right words. “Josh, I mean. Did you tell him about…”

“Us?” she finishes for him, incredulous. “Ha-a-a-a, no. No. Definitely not. So congratulations, you can rest easy. This had literally nothing to do with you. Don’t flatter yourself.”

He shakes his head. “Right. Right.”

It’s not like it was weighing on his conscience, or anything—it wasn’t—but at least then something about this whole mess would make some kind of sense. Because though he’d be hard pressed to admit it, when he looks at Rebecca—smart, sweet, spitfire Rebecca—and looks at Josh—laid-back, lowbrow, entirely lacking Josh—he knows which one of them would have been in their right mind to walk away.

Rebecca finishes off her bottle and reaches over him to set it on the nightstand with a thud. He lets out a muffled grunt at the undignified swing of her breasts in his face as she leans over, and when she collapses back onto the mattress beside him she hides her face into the pillow with a tipsy giggle. It’s jarring, the way she oscillates so effortlessly between despair and fury and odd moments of unnerving quiet. When her features re-emerge from their refuge in the Egyptian cotton she rolls closer onto her side to face him properly, her lips distractingly close to his.

“Nathaniel,” she says, voice low and honeyed and each syllable of his name hitting his face in a shallow puff. “I know you want me.”

She’s far drunker than he is, loose and mellow and malleable where her body leans into his, and he does her the kindness of squashing down the impulse to scoff in the face of her deduction. 

(He’s well aware she needs the confidence boost and besides—he’s willing to wager she has no idea.)

His teeth knock together as he shuts his mouth with a hard swallow when her hands come up to palm his cheeks, thumbs rubbing lightly over the dusting of stubble that prickles back against her fingertips. It’s unsettling, being the focal point of her fixation, but not unpleasant.

The want pools low and heavy in his stomach.

Nathaniel is no stranger to desire. He’s wanted things (wanted _women_ ) before. What’s alarming about his attraction now is the way in which it pokes and prods at him and forces him in so many confusing directions all at once—Rebecca Bunch is not remotely his type but there’s something strange about her that drags him in, gets him drunk; burns into his brain every little kernel he knows about her and only makes him desperate to know more.

He wants to know what makes [ _a Harvard and Yale alumni from New York_ ] arch back and fist her fingers in the bed sheets. Wants to know what makes [ _this woman who loves Harry Potter_ ] shudder and gasp and moan. Wants to know what makes [ _the daughter of a deadbeat dad_ ] bite her lip, break into smile and laugh without a hint of irony.

Wants to know what makes [ _this girl who kisses like she’s running out of air_ ] choose Southern California’s most abysmal approximation of a man to hinge her happiness on.

Rebecca looks like she’s planning to say something else but then her eyes lose focus and she hums instead, letting her hands fall away from his face as she sinks back into the pillows. She surprises him by maintaining the eye contact for as long as she can fight the flutter of her eyes, watching him right up until her lids turn to lead and she gives in to the exhaustion of the day, her face finally slack with some approximation of peace. He hates the way it floods him with relief.

For a misguided, self-indulgent ( _disgusting)_ moment, he lets himself believe she wants him back. Lets himself pretend that he was her deliberate, inevitable choice in all this, and not that she was lost and he _just happened to be there,_ a mistake waiting for her to make it _._

Until she shifts in the space beside him, frowns, twists and rolls towards him and mumbles the name of her absent fiancé into his bare shoulder with a sigh.

Every last shred of common sense within him tells him he should leave. But it’s late, he’s been drinking, (Rebecca’s body is oh so soft and warm where it curls innocently into his) and his mind feels foggy and dazed and ready for sleep. In the morning, he tells himself. In the morning he’ll slip out before she wakes and let her be. Let Paula know where to find her and be the one to figure out the right thing to say.

 

* * *  


 

The problem is she beats him to it.

His t-shirt, her shoes, her phone from the nightstand all are gone; the only evidence she was ever there at all is her wedding dress, still laying white and water-logged at the bottom of the shower stall. He tries his hardest not to look at it as he brushes his teeth, splashes water on his face, winces at the dampness of his shirt and pants as he pulls them on and leaves.

She doesn’t come in to work on Monday, or Tuesday, or any number of days after that.

He grits his teeth against the memory of her fingers tracing gently at his jawline as he shaves.

(She doesn’t answer his emails, texts or calls.)


End file.
